


preview: swimming with piranhas, don't need a shark

by CampionSayn



Series: A Little Less Blood [3]
Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types, DC Elseworlds, Joker (2019)
Genre: Earth-3, Gen, Harley is not having a good time, Multi, Multiverse, The Wonderland Effect, and she hates it, these Jokers are good guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-13 14:05:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21495511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CampionSayn/pseuds/CampionSayn
Summary: In which the Multiverse is a vast place with more than a few people that pop in and out of places they don't belong every once in a while. Sometimes scores of people.Or: a couple mirror variations of heroes and villains wander across the Event Horizon. Neither Harley, nor Batman, nor two Jokers that qualify as actual people seem very pleased about any of this. Send help.
Relationships: Arthur Fleck & Bruce Wayne, Harley Quinzel & Jack Ryder | The Creeper, John Blake/Joker
Series: A Little Less Blood [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/699174
Kudos: 11





	preview: swimming with piranhas, don't need a shark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Frankcastle0530](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frankcastle0530/gifts).

> To Frank: not exactly sure if this was what you were talking about, but this is only a short, convoluted first draft, so do tell me if I'm on the right track?

Here's a thing.  
  
While she had done her very, very best to increase the security of Arkham and make sure both the guards and the escaped patients were kept as safe as possible, there were always holes.  
  
Like people crashing in dressed like darker versions of the Bats.  
  
Or...not darker, physically, per say, though they did indeed have that aura about them that she was at least marginally familiar with after being the guinea pig among the villain elite used to walk between dimensions either because she was disposable or--more likely--because she and her ex-husband _(now currently in the cell three halls down cackling like an asshole as she and the trespasser launched around breaking things)_ had enough balls and chaotic energy to make it through whatever shitty and/or expensive transporters someone hooked up.  
  
The last one that she walked through hadn't anything to do with the Wonderland Effect, as she liked to call it. No pale or blacking mirrors of herself and everyone else. Actually, her last trip had been so fucking boring, just getting money out of abandoned bank vaults from a timeline where the zombie apocalypse had manifested in bacterial form and all humans on the planet had died in the nineteen-nineties; leaving her to wander around, carrying a bag that eventually amounted to two-billion dollars she had to put in a shopping cart she stole from a parking lot while running away from what she could only assume what had been feral dogs that had evolved to look like giant Timber Wolves with horns.  
  
Still boring, despite how _interesting_ it was. And it smelled bad. Like the inside of a wet cardboard box filled with dead leaves.  
  
This was obviously not like that.   
  
This circumstance, she would later learn, was Luthor's fault. Not from her Earth, thank fuck; actually a very nice, very black Luthor that went by Alexander and apologized profusely when he showed up on the Arkham front lawn with Batman and his birds and a very conflicted looking Superman to pick up the not-Batman that apparently went by Owlman after she nailed him in the face and out of a poorly secured, second floor window with a fire extinguisher kept on the ward in groups of three in case they had to keep Firefly for a consultation because Black Gate was full of a staff that couldn't be trusted with anything, at any time, ever.  
  
She quickly lost any fancy quips or good humor she might have made in greeting when Owlman tried to break away and found himself knocked on his ass once more by people who were not her, but familiar enough that literally everyone not from that other alternate earth felt the hair on the back of their neck stand up.  
  
"Oh, Feathers, this has to be one of your worst ideas," scarred, red painted lips smiled condescendingly down at the grey caped enemy.  
  
"Probably not _the_ worst one, but it's doubtlessly the top ten," agreed similar painted red lips, but with an accent coming along out of an older set of vocal chords.  
  
The Owlman looked more pissed to be caught at a disadvantage underfoot of two fucking clowns than the fact that a woman that looked like a stiff breeze could knock her over put up a decent fight against him. His nose was still bleeding from when he'd had her in a headlock to snap her neck and Bud had taken the opportunity to round the corner while moving her interns to bowl both of them over; his dinner plate sized paw knocking ridiculously into his face as Harley rolled and huffed at his blood getting in her hair.  
  
Harley took the moment nobody but Batman was looking at her to use her crappy, Radio Shack dinosaur of a walkie-talkie, absolute and unendingly cold rage right there in her voice as she called up Joan, "I know I'm gonna get shit for this later, but it seems I'm being called out for the evening. The Babes will double check nobody got out and I will do my paperwork tomorrow. Yes, I know, I hate it too... Yes, I see them... _No_, I'm not happy either."

* * *

This wasn't in the guidelines assigned to the Talon when he jumped universe with his master.  
  
The expectation was landing in the police station, or something like the Owl's Nest, the Court or even some much less functioning version of Arkham.  
  
What the immortal soldier of Owlman, aged seventeen--a teenager with bare few pieces and ravaged emotions left over from being abducted into the Court from the Circus and still not knowing if his parents were even alive or dead--and stoic, wasn't prepared for was being dropped into an apartment that... put him on edge.  
  
A set of teenagers his age that didn't seem that out of sorts to find someone suddenly among them from one blink of an eye to another; the tall brunet next to the stove even continuing to make eggs with a side of bacon as a pair of (probably) mixed raced hyena cubs stood at his feet and simply blinked at Talon from the doorway. A blonde girl lithe along the sofa with a blue skinned boy frightening similar in looks to the hero magician Klarion "Pagan" Bleak of Talon's world snuggled on top of her; the girl raising a brow at Talon's entrance and the _(definitely a magic user--though the smell in the air was sharper)_ other merely opening one eye to give him a glance before whining, "No trespassers, standing room only!"  
  
He tossed a throw pillow at Talon but said trespasser didn't even get the chance to draw a blade as he found himself swallowed in a shadow as an absurdly familiar, bone chilling chuckle rang through the room with the front door banging against the wall.  
  
"Well, well, what've we got 'ere?"  
  
The teeth Talon turned to find were still sharp, but the smile wasn't cruel.

* * *

The sight of the Joker with skin not dyed shining white, scars ghastly and painful, watching Harley with a look of absolute anguish--as though at any given moment he would vomit or breakdown sobbing--was quite the spectacle for Batman to keep his eye on.  
  
And apparently that world's Ra's as well. Keeping an eye on, that is.  
  
On both of them, it seemed, as he had a look in his eye of a lower order than Joker's, but on the same spectrum. Not loss, but undeniable pity.

* * *

Blue eyes rimmed in sleepless grey and scars finally healed from being shot with a nail gun looked up from her papers, pausing her talking to nobody in particular to look at the souring face of the Joker that introduced himself as Arthur _(she could appreciate that, in a way; he was still dark around the edges, like every Joker, but he didn't want to be)_ in the aftermath of his laughing for a good thirty seconds, completely out of the blue.  
  
He was mortified, Bruce leaning his shoulder against his for an attempt at comfort, and was about to apologize, until he found the woman looking at him rather seriously; not like she was pissed at his laughing, but like she was aware something was wrong.  
  
"Pseudobulbar Effect?"  
  
"I...Yes," he admitted, stunned that she said it right out of the gate. It usually took a guess or two, even from people like Ra's or neurosurgeons.  
  
"You're taking medication for it."  
  
"Uh-huh. Highest prescription available."  
  
"And it's obviously not working. See me after the meeting."  
  
The other Joker (Jackie, he'd introduced earlier that day; like he knew calling the both of them Joker would give everyone a headache) flinched hard at that. The teenager beside him squeezing his hand as her black eyes steadied on the woman as she went back to paring the Crime Syndicate down to bare bones as if the interruption hadn't even happened.  
  
The physical contact helped. This woman was an actual medical professional, after all. Not a substitute nurse when she wasn't teaching small children in the Gotham slums.

* * *

The film was grainy and the sound was terrible, but the threat and the horror had shone through as if directed by Stanley Kubrick and Guillermo del Toro in tandem.  
  
Bruce could appreciate the flinches and the sadness of Jackie, now, because of something like this.   
  
Seeing the love of your life tortured and burned alive on a big screen in the Gotham Square would break any man, especially if confronted with a shadow of a mirror reflection that walks and talks and doesn't want anything to do with you.  
  
Jackie wept, still facing away from the screen even with the volume muted; having long since watched it repeatedly for any signs that could lead him to her body.  
  
John remained at his side, but did his best to answer any questions Batman had for them. How long ago the film had been made, how long she had been missing before any of them had noticed, had the film been live streamed entirely or had some of if been spliced from other...showings?  
  
"Three years. We were scattered through the Narrows and along the coast on a different matter, so about ten hours. We think it was live stream, based on the fact that he actually paused between sessions to get new materials and to, I guess, gloat."  
  
Dark blue eyes blinked as Jackie got up from his seat, making for the bin and heaving acrid white-grey into it. John immediately beside him to keep his hair out of the line of fire and rub his back in apology.  
  
Definitely a good man. Most people couldn't fake that kind of reaction--definitely not on an empty stomach.  
  
Batman tried not to look at the screen, the rotting corpse surrounded with dead insect shells with a time-stamp in the bottom of the screen that indicated truth in Blake's words and made it clear what Owlman was. He retrieved a bottle of water and jerky from the fridge, kept in most Watchtower rooms for the speedsters, and handed them to Blake with only the barest words spoken.  
  
"I'm sorry."

* * *

She would absolutely kill Owlman.   
  
There, that was the difference to top all the others.  
  
Black cloth that thick and oily didn't show blood, but her pale complexion made up for it in the spray if red that speckled the mostly undamaged side of her face, as well as the matting in her dead yellow hair. Red as heavy as spray paint and just as explosive when she'd done the one thing the Owl and his Court _hated_.  
  
She'd surprised him.   
  
She held tight to the gauntlet that punched her like a mule, tucked Talon behind her like the protection of another beast, let Owlman's blades pierce forearm and shoulder right and deep to the hilt that was kept preternaturally sterile due to Owlman being an anal control freak; looked him in the eye without screaming...  
  
And then she'd yanked Owlman's blade out of her shoulder and driven it into his underarm, up toward's his shoulder before changing her mind and cutting down, down, down through his ribs like they had the hollowness of any real bird, only stopping when the blade caught at his utility belt.  
  
"No home movies this time. Sorry."  
  
She would _absolutely_ kill him...  
  
But not this time. It wasn't her job and she was trying to set a better example for her kids.  
  
_(Funny how she could only call them that when one or all of them were in trouble.)_  
  
She just barely grinned, all of her teeth covered in blood from when he punched her and she bit down on the inside of her cheek; twisted the knife **_just_ **so--  
  
Before she nailed him so hard in the balls with her knee that he sank to the ground, wheezing through the pain in his side as well as choking on air.  
  
Talon honestly was too stunned to stop her as she trotted away and told the Batmen and the Jokers to "Do what you want with them. I'm done."  
  
As if she didn't even notice that one of the owl's blades was still inside her, probably tearing something sensitive and important.  
  
Like she hadn't made sure Talon was out of the way of friendly fire, because Owlman was actually aiming one of those very sharp knives at Talon; a punishment for messing up with the Batman's Clutch and the woman's Ambush. Enemies were not allowed to live to make a fool out of the Court and, more importantly, Owlman himself.


End file.
